PARALLEL PLOT AND FATE IN PALACIO VALDtS,
EL ORIGEN DEL PENSAMIENTO (1894)
D. J. O'CoNNOR
University of New Orleans
Contemporary and later critics of Palacio Valdés' 1894 novel have
typically been concerned with its intention. While sorne readers have
been uncertain as to whether Palacio meant to satirize false science
or science in general, most critics have described the novel as a
satire on the ideas of Cesare Lombroso. As such, El origen ... has
been considered a development of the final scene of La Fe in which
two disciples of Lombroso confidently deduced the precise nature
of the protagonist's presumed degeneracy from a reading of his
physical measurements 1•
El origen del pensamiento does satirize positivistic science direc·
ting its shafts not only against Lombroso but also against his dis·
ciple, Max Nordau, whose work was well known at this time 2•
Emilia Pardo Bazán, in the 1894 articles published as La nueva cuestión palpitante, similarly took issue with Nordau's formulations of
Lombroso's basic ideas.
Along with what he evidently viewed as bogus science, Palacio
satirized religious hypocrites, religious confidence men, and perverted forros of religious observance. And, probing more deeply into
1 G. Gómez·Ferrer Morant (400-402) and José M. Roca Franquesa (447)
among recent critics and Léo Quesnel (377), Peseux-Richard (422) and Baxter
(558 b) among older critics, stated that El origen ... is a satire on Lombroso
and his followers.
2 Nordau's Entartung was published in Berlín in 1893. The French translation, Dégénérescence, appeared in Paris in 1894. The two volume Spanish
transfation by Nicolás Salmerón y García, Degeneración, was published in
Madrid in 1902.
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ESPARA CONTEMPORÁNEA
a question that fueled a central conflict between partisans of science
and of religion, Palacio explored the role of chance vis.11-vis sorne
version of determinism, fate or Providence. This theme was important as well in Flaubert's Bouvard et Pécuchet, a work that
El origen . . . in sorne ways resembles, as Baquero Goyanes has
pointed out (51)3. In Flaubert's work this theme is posed as a philosophical problem to be discussed; it does not emerge from the
narrative, which lacks a plot. In El origen ... , the problem arises
from the action that ends the novel.
Causality, as it is represented in traditional realist narrative,
is not always invoked in Palacio's novel. Chance appears to
govern events and, considering the nature of those events, absurdity
triumphs. But the satirical, absurdist tone generated by the mostly
farcical events changes abmptly toward the end when don Pantaleón first assaults his son-in-law-to be, Timoteo, then abducts his
four-year-old grandson, Mario. Up to this point, the Iargely episodic
narrative has presented a sizeable cast of characters and a succession
of their amusingly described sottises. Pantaleón's abduction of little
Mario not only contrasts sharply in kind, and consequently in tone,
with what has gone before, but it is also definitive in the sense that
it provides the occasion for signification in the novel. This essay
explores two questions raised by the novel's ending: does the
appearance of chance events and actíons conceal a structure of
causality that authorizes the jarring (because unexpected) ending?;
and, how may Mario's meditation and the conclusion of the novel
be read?
Pantaleón's demented purpose in abducting his grandson is to
remove the top of the child's skull so as to observe his living brain.
The child would thereby become a martyr to science and his grandfather the discoverer of the origin or primary site of thought. During
the two days that Pantaleón keeps the boy captive in his attic
laboratory, the child's anguished parents suffer torments as great
3 Baquero Goyanes was the first to observe that Sánchez and Moreno
engage in experiments that recall the scientific endeavors of Flaubert's
Bouvard and Pécuchet. The conversations of Palacio's two characters and,
above all, their expedition to a town outside Madrid in order to obtain the
measurements of a criminal sentenced to death, certainly bring to mind
similar conversations and activities on tbe part of Flaubert's cbaracters.
In addition, Flaubert's irony and bis clipped, dry style constitute a plausible
rnodel for Palacio's presentation of bis two would-be positivists.
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PARALLEL PLOIS AND FATE IN PALACIO VALDÉS
as those of their physically abused and terrorized son. The boy js
rescued from the knife at the last moment, but the ending is nota
happy one. The suffering caused by the sudden intrusion of madness
and violence into the lives of decent, well-meaning people determines
the sombre meditation of the boy's father, Mario. The novel then
ends with the ambiguous reactions of Mario senior's friend, Miguel
Rivera, and of his wife, Carlota, as they observe him lost in thought,
gazing at the sunset.
The question of causality arises indirecty in the course of
Mario's musings. As he gazes at the sun setting in the countryside
near Madrid, he mentally addresses that star. He has seen his
innocent child suffer terrible tortures. The unfortunate Pantaleón,
only minutes before confined in a mental institution, inflicted that
torture, he says, «por un impulso fatal. Mi espíritu sangra», he críes
out, «y no comprende nada» (571 b ).
What seems to be incomprehensible to Mario is that innocence
has suffered at the hands of an agent who in a sense is also innocent,
for he has been moved, not by his own volition, but by an «impulso
fatal». It is unlikely that this fatal impulse refers to the activity of
a force or a fate altogether separate from character. One would
have to imagine an indifferent or even malevolent fate that maneuvers human beings into drastic collisions regardless of the bent or
direction of their individual natures and this notion is not supported
by Palacio's theories as noted, for example, in the Estética del
carácter (143, 144) or by his fictional accounts of character and
necessity. The term «impulso fatal» undoubtedly refers to the
compulsion of Pantaleón's madness. Does the word «fatal» preclude
a natural explanation of its origin? Mario himself <loes not pursue
the implications of this word in his meditation, nor <loes the narrator
provide suggestions as to its meaning.
That the reader has not been given an explanation of the origin
of Pantaleón's madness is the odder since Palacio normally furnished
information readers could use in order to explain a character's
thoughts, words and actions. But while in El Origen ... the narrator's
description of Mario's childhood, adolescence and early manhood
adequately explains his overriding need for a wife and family, the
only other character ín the novel whose conduct is accounted for in
this way is Laureano Romadonga, Mario's antagonist in the novel's
ongoing discussion of the institution of marriage. The remaining
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ESPAÑA CONTEMPORÁNEA
characters act and speak largely without intervention by the narrator
in the way of informative asides. Nor do these characters provide
such infonnation themselves.
The contrast between the two modes of characterization in this
novel is striking. Mario and Laureano are recognizably detennined
in a traditional realist manner. The others are not. A character such
as Timoteo, who is without a history and is essentially unconnected
to anyone or any place except the Café del Siglo where he plays the
violin and displays bis grotesque repulsiveness, would not be out
of place in an absurdist vision of Madrid life written in the nineteen
forties. In effect, Palacio, in El origen ... , dispensed to a surprising
extent with the usual corn:entions of characterization believed to
guarantee verisimilitude a concept based largely on the notion
of an intelligible, linear relationship of cause and effect. As for
Pantaleón, the novelist did not «explain» bis character's madness by
reference to heredity, upbringing and environment or by reference
to contemporary psychological theories. Yet Pantaleón is not, like
Timoteo, a figure without real substance, a figure who is, no matter
how vivid, inexplicable in realist terms. The relative depth and
resonance of Pantaleón's characterization results from a convincing
rendering of bis increasing alienation and, above ali, from bis having
been modelled on don Quijote.
There is no analogue to Dulcinea, but in many other respects the
presentation of Pantaleón echoes Cervantes' presentation of bis protagonist. Among the most notable similarities are the author's
choice of a meaningful narne, Pantaleón, suggestive of an elderly
buffoon; the characterization of Sánchez before he goes mad as a
sentimental, good-hearted, passive fellow, dominated by women;
the use of a catalyst (Adolfo Moreno) to awaken in Pantaleón a
desire to impose his new-found vision on others and win fame
(Pantaleón's major attempt, undertaken along with Moreno, to
enlighten the ignorant ends, as do sorne of Ouijote's similar attempts,
in a drubbing); the attribution of special power for triggering
obsessive thought to certain words; the capacity for eloquent, or at
least, high-flown, discourse. Toward the end of El origen ... , after
Pantaleón's foiled (and comic) attempt at ridding the world of
Timoteo whose herpes disqualifies him in the struggle for survival,
Pantaleón even falls into a deep sleep from which he awakens
apparently sane. Finally, as with don Quijote, Pantaleón's family
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PARALLEL PLOTS A~D FATE IN PALACIO VALDÉS
employs a subterfuge to effect his peaceful removal to the sanatorium, i.e., they act out a comedy in which he, because of his
obsession, cannot help but take part.
In the end, the identification of Pantaleón with Quijote is a major
source of the reader's shocked surprise when the former radically
departs from the essentially benevolent nature of his model. Pantaleón not only proposes to execute his grandchild in cold blood; he
also makes the chilling declaration to the terrified child he holds
captive that he will eventually have to kill the boy's father as well.
Palacio's mode of characterization, except for his representations
of Mario and Laureano, does not then provide adequate realistic
accounts of actions performed in the novel, and this is especially
so for the crucial act- Pantaleón's abduction of little Mario. The
artífice of Pantaleón's literary origin and the disregard for explanations of his madness contribute to a sense of arbitrariness which
is reinforced by the apparent role of chance in the novel.
Palacio's narrative presents pictures without offering reasons
for things happening. Nor, until the end, <loes the reader require
reasons for such amusing absurdities. But confronted with the
impingement of Pantaleón's life on Mario's and his family's life, the
reader naturally seeks an explanation for this sudden, violent
convergence.
In El origen ... the story of Mario and Carlota unfolds alongside
of but apparently separate from that of Pantaleón's growing obsession with science. Palacio's use of parallel plots in this novel
resembles most closely his employment of the same structuring
device in El cuarto poder (1888): parallel plots also figured in La Fe
(1892) and in Tristán o el pesimismo (1895}.
There is an obvious similarity in the problem posed by El cuarto
poder and El origen... The sudden unexpected convergence of
parallel plots with tragic or near-tragic results played out against
a background of satire is potentially a merely mechanical device, at
worst, an efectista way of figuring the shock the linking action may
cause as its repercussions spread; especially so, if, as in the case of
Mario and his family, it affects the lives of people who apparently
have little or no reason to expect such a disruption. If the convergence were seen as a simple coincidence, an accident, it could be
interpreted as an unfortunate, catastrophic but not wholly unlikely
event considering that Pantaleón had easy access to his small victim.
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ESPAÑA CONTEMPORÁNEA
Such a reading of the significance of Pantaleón's act would, however,
tend to reduce the novel's ending to the meaningless sensationalism
of a newspaper crime report.
The fact that the seemingly unprepared-for linking action occurs
at the end of the novel suggests that the text should be re-examined
for clues, signs that were undecipherable until the final action had
taken place (Martin, 74 ). Two pieces of infonnation, in particular,
which at first reading appeared to be without special implications,
in retrospect acquire new meaning for they can be seen to have
contributed to a kind of patterning. The patterning consists in the
temporal coincidence of momentous events in the lives of Pantaleón
and Mario. The intersecting of two independent lives begins on the
very day of Mario's wedding to Carlota. Her father, Pantaleón,
happens upan another guest, Adolfo Moreno, who is botanizing as
the wedding party amuses itself in the country setting. Their
ensuing conversation originates the obsession with science which
governs the rest of Pantale6n's life.
The conjunction of Mario's marriage with the origin of Pantaleón's obsession cannot be construed as merely coincidental if the
reader recalls a similar «coincidence» halfway through the novel.
When Mario's son is born, Pantaleón tells his son-in-law that he has
a secret project which he will not reveal until it is realized. That
project, as the reader soon discovers, is to ascertain the origin of
thought. Thus the pattern is set midway through the novel for Pantaleón's fateful collision with Mario. In this manner the parallel
plots engage on the level of action or proposed action well befare
the culminating act which brings them together definitively.
Entrambasaguas and Baquero Goyanes suggested that the two
principal plots provide a thematic contrast or a «trasfondo dialéctico». For the fonner, the contrast lay in what is normal as opposed
to what is abnormal. Far the latter, the dialectic took shape in tenns
of pessimism and optimism. Entrambasaguas contrasted Pantaleón's
monstrous madness to Carlota's and Mario's nonnality- the two of
them, he wrote, are «llenos de vida humana» (49). Baquero Goyanes
pointed out what he saw as a tendency discernible in Palacio's
earliest work - to establish a counterpoint to bis grim pessimism,
a counterpoint consisting of a «línea melódica hecha de vitalidad,
buen humor, optimismo» ... (72). The present reading of El origen ...
does not support such schematic representations of contrasts or of
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PARALLEL PLOTS AND FATE IN PALACIO VALDÉS
a governing dialectic- at least not those referred to by Entrambasaguas and Baquero Goyanes.
Mario's story is about marriage in general and about the artist's
special requirements for marriage, in particular. Laureano by word
and deed, and Rivera, mainly through discussion, contribute to this
theme to the extent that their subplots may be subsumed in Mario's
story 4. Laureano's is a wholly dissolvent view of marriage. Rivera's
is a pragmatic assessment of how Mario as an artist with special
needs can enjoy and, above all, use the intellectually-limited but
good and compliant Carlota to best advantage.
Mario marries into Pantaleón's family and is absorbed and
fascinated from the outset by bis vision of Pantaleón as father, of
doña Carolina as mother, and by bis idea of their relationship as
spouses. 1t is the implicit contrast between Mario's perception of
Pantaleón's marriage and the reality of bis in-law's marriage that
unites the parallel plots more consistently and meaningfully than
<loes any contrast between Pantaleón's madness and Mario's normality or between whatever elements of pessimism and optimism
might be assigned to each plot.
Mario's normality, at least as an accurate interpreter of reality,
is precisely what is questionable. His marriage is successful because
his wife conceals certain facts from him and allows him the freedom
he requires as a sculptor. But, just as Mario <loes not wish to know
everything in bis own marriage and is shielded from such knowledge
by an understanding wife, so his intense emotional need for a family
blinds him to the real natures of Pantaleón and Carolina. He <loes
not register bis motber-in-law's hypocrisy, greed and cruelty any
more than he registers Pantaleón's self-absorption, indifference to
bis family or bis dangerous obsessiveness. Mario's virtues and
endearing traits include an inability to see certain things as tbey are.
Mario's misinterpretations of reality do not go unnoticed by
Miguel Rivera, one of whose comments midway tbrough the novel
on Mario's almost willful simplicity also constitutes a telling
commentary on Rivera's worldly-wise but fundamentally selfisb
passivity: «Después de todo, pensó ¿qué se adelanta con sacar a los
4 Ali the characters contribute directly or indirectly to the discussion of
marriage. Adolfo Moreno, for example, who is primarily involved in Pantaleón's story, deflates and upsets Mario at the end of the second chapter by
asserting that marriage is not natural (483 a).
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ESPAÑA CONTEMPORÁNEA
hombres de los errores que los hacen felices?» (514 a). Carlota's
desire to protect her husband similarly proceeds from her awareness
of his innocence and from her own passivity. Her willingness to
suffer for him makes her the victim of her mother and sister, «la
cenicienta de la casa» (511 a) while Mario, even on the rare occasions
when he is dimly aware of her sacrifices, prefers not to think about
them: «Una vaga inquietud agitó momentáneamente su espíritu;
pero con la inconsciencia que le caracterizaba no pensó más en
ella» (510 a).
Carlota's self-abnegation is not left entirely unquestioned, as the
above citation demonstrates; furthermore, there is an implicit contrast between Carlota who is the soul of self-sacrifice and Concha
who fights tooth and nail to legitimize her relationship with the
egotistical cad, Laureano. Despite Concha's class and the class diffecence between the two women which may have allowed the author
and his first readers to accept more readily the lower class woman's
energetic pursuit of what she thought was due her, Carlota's passive
acceptance of her lot may bave marked her in the minds of at least
sorne readers as the complicit victim of a conventionally minded,
self-absorbed husband.
Victims in Palacio's fiction are seldom wholly innocent. Mario,
like Carlota, is a complicit victim insofar as he resists disciplining
his desire that things should be as he wishes them to be. Hís
complicity deromantícizes hím, making him more credible as a
victim of what later befalls him.
Clues and insights gleaned from the ways the two main plots
intersect, provide contrast, and even mirror each other (Mario's
fantasizing of marriage ancl artist's concentration resemble Pantaleón's falsifications of science and misguided singleness of purpose)
may not explain Pantaleón's act but they do suggest that it should
not be interpreted as a merdy chance event. The parallel plots serve
to figure the just visible workings of a larger, invisible mechanism.
Pantaleón's act thus appears to be the outcome of necessity, a
necessity which is inexplicable, i.e., fate, but which works on its
not entirely innocent victims as relentlessly as the most transparent
traditional determinism, and which implies, as well, the idea of
purpose, of an end. That end is to reveal to Mario what he then
shows he has understood (or has not understood) in the meditation
with which the novel concludes.
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PARALLEL PLOTS AND FATE IN PALACIO VALDÉS
Whatever the ultimate source of the «impulso fatal» that impelled
Pantaleón's life toward Mario's, the latter is left to react to the
consequences of what has happened. More specifically, the last
scene and its import are filtered through three consciousnesses:
first Mario's; then his friend Rivera's; and finally, his wife Carlota's.
There is no overt commentary by the narrator.
Mario's meditation moves from joy in contemplation of the
sunset's beauty to a desire to escape this life. That desire is
motivated, as noted earlier, by his inability to understand why
the fatally-driven Pantaleón has caused - or has been allowed to
cause - such suffering. Mario begs the sun to remove him from
«esta mísera tierra encadenada a su feroz egoísmo, a su tristeza
y oscuridad ... » (571 b). The narrator writes that a tremor of
longing seized the sculptor's body.
lt is significant-with Lombroso's and Nordau's identification
of artistic genius and madness in mind - that the Mario of this
meditation is not the feckless husband and father, but rather the
artist. The essential dichotomy between the two aspects of Mario's
character is frequently insisted on by the narrator, who wrote in
Chapter VI of the newly-married Mario: «Su alegría ruidosa, inmotivada, era realmente infantil; su inocencia para las cosas de la vida
rayaba en simpleza. Tan sólo cuando se tocaba a su arte adquirían
aquellos ojos una expresión grave, concentrada, y su palabra, por
lo general incoherente, tomaba inflexiones profundas, se hacía precisa y enérgica» (496 a). lt is the Mario possessed of the artist's
capacity far concentration, among other qualities, who faces the
reality he will either surmount orbe defeated by.
Mario's face, we are told, seemed illumined by an immortal light,
his nerves were taut with emotion. A tear trembled in his ecstatic
eyes which were fixed on the western sky. His wife, realizing that
Mario had remained behind as they all walked toward Madrid, asked
Rivera what her husband was doing. Rivera turned to look back
at his friend and, writes the narrator, when he saw the contemplative
attitude of the artist and the strange mystic expression in his eyes,
he understood what was happening in Mario's soul. «Déjalo- manifestó gravemente-. Tu marido quizá sepa en este momento dónde
se halla el origen del pensamiento». The novel ends with Carlota's
response, «¡No, por Dios! exclamó la fiel esposa, asustada, corriendo
hacia él» (571 b ).
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ESPAÑ.\ CONTEMPORÁNEA
There are at least two ways to read this pc-,sage. In the first,
Mario's thoughts may be seen as a confrontation with the problem
of evil. That he finally stands rapt in a mystic vision could indicate
a religious resolution of sorts to his quandary. lt is hardly a traditional, Christian resolution given the unorthodox nomenclature
Mario uses in describing his vision: he yearns to behold Truth and
Goodness and a Power able to reconcile contradictions and heal
pain. Nonetheless, Rivera might so interpret Mario's attitude and
further infer that suffering has led to a revelatory vision of the true
nature of reality. Suffering then, in a sense, is the origin of thought.
Carlota's alarmed reaction to Rivera's words would amount to no
more than a thoughtless, automatic response associated to the havoc
caused by her father in his search for the physical site of the origin
of thought.
A different reading centering on Mario's wish to escape an existence he cannot understand is also plausible. The ecstatic look on
his face might indicate a dazed submission to the incomprehensible
rather than a vision of the true nature of existence. Carlota may
be rightly alarmed: her fear that her husband's rapt intensity might
mean that he stands on the brink of madness could be justified.
The second reading would draw tighter the connection between
Mario and Pantaleón. It would, in effect, amount to a cruel irony if
Pantaleón's deranged act had served to exacerbate his son-in-law's
artistic sensibility and capacity for suffering to the point of reducing
him to the state of an ecsta.tic, a mystic; in short, a degenerate in
Nordau's and in Pantaleón's terms. The conjunction of the two
men's fates would then be final and definitive.
Palacio's limited reliance on traditional realistic determination
of characters and, above all, his use of parallel plots to bind the
two main protagonists lead to the sense that fate - an obscure,
unknowable force - has governed events. This perception is capped
by an ambiguous and possibly ironic ending that Ieaves open and
unresolved two issues of contemporary interest, namely, the supposed redemptive value of suffering and the links between artistic
genius and madness, between mysticism and madness.
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WORKS CITED
Baxter, Silvester. «A Great Modem Spaniard». Atlantic Monthly 85 (1900):
546-59.
Gómez-Ferrer Morant, G. Palacio Valdés y el mundo social de la Restauración.
Oviedo: Instituto de Estudios Asturianos, 1983.
Martin, Wallace. Recent Theories of Narrative. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1986.
Las mejores novelas contemporáneas. Selección y estudio de Joaquín de Entrambasaguas. Barcelona: Editorial Planeta, 1969, III.
Palacio Valdés, Armando. «La estética del carácter». La España Moderna,
II (1890): 123-145.
- «El origen del pensamiento». O.C., II, Madrid: Aguilar, 1959.
- Tristán o el pesimismo. Estudio, notas y comentarios de Mariano Baquero
Goyanes. Madrid: Narcea, 1971,
Peseux-Richard, H. «Armando Palacio Valdés». Revue Hispanique 63 (1918):
11841.
Quesnel, Léo. «La Littérature Contemporaine en Espagne». La Nouvelte
Revue 91 (1894): 377-82.
Roca Franquesa, José María. «La Novela de Palacio Valdés: Clasificación y
Análisis». Boletín del Instituto de Estudios Asturianos 7 (1953): 426-457.
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